Tony Abeyta (born November 6, 1965) is a contemporary Navajo Diné artist living between Berkeley California and

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , literal translation, lit. "Holy Faith") is the capital city, capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Santa Fe County. With over 89,000 residents, Santa Fe is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, fourt ...

. Abeyta's work is most well known as mixed media paintings and oil landscapes of the American southwest. His subject matter includes the New Mexico landscape, ancestral

Navajo The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...

iconography and American Modernism

Early life and education

Abeyta was born in

Gallup, New Mexico Gallup is a city in McKinley County, New Mexico, United States, with a population of 21,899 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. A substantial percentage of its population is Native Americans in the United States, Native American, wi ...

to Navajo painter Narciso "Ciso" Platero Abeyta and Sylvia Ann, a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

artist. He was the youngest of seven children. He received an Associate of Fine Arts degree from the

Institute of American Indian Arts The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed ...

in Santa Fe in 1986, where he received the T.C. Cannon memorial scholarship and later, an honorary doctorate of humanities. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the

Maryland Institute College of Art The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is a Private university, private art school, art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, it is regarded as one of ...

in 1999 and a Master of Fine Arts from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

in 2004. Aside from his homes in New Mexico and California, he has worked and studied in Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Florence, Italy, Venice, Italy, and the South of France.

Career

Abeyta has lived and painted in both Santa Fe New Mexico and Berkeley, California. He has had numerous solo shows in Santa Fe and Sedona, Arizona, and has participated in multiple group shows in Santa Fe, Sedona, Los Angeles, California, and New York, New York. His work has been included in the Smithsonian's

National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...

, Washington D.C.,

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the list of largest art museums, 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 painting ...

, Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico,

Wheelwright Museum The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is a museum devoted to Native American arts. It is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who came from Boston, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo singer and medic ...

, Santa Fe, New Mexico,

Museum of Indian arts and Culture The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is a museum of Native American art and culture located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is one of eight museums in the state operated by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs and is accredited by the Ame ...

Santa Fe, New Mexico,

Philbrook Museum Philbrook Museum of Art is an art museum with expansive formal gardens located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The museum, which opened in 1939, is located in a former 1920s villa, "Villa Philbrook", the home of Oklahoma oil pioneer Waite Phillips and his ...

, Tulsa, Oklahoma,

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...

, Phoenix, Arizona,

New Mexico Museum of Art The New Mexico Museum of Art is an art museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe governed by the state of New Mexico, United States. It is one of four state-run museums in Santa Fe that are part of the Museum of New Mexico. It is located one bloc ...

, Santa Fe, New Mexico,

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With an encyclopedic collection of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums betwe ...

, Denver, Colorado,

Crocker Art Museum The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...

, Sacramento, California,

Autry Museum of the American West The Autry Museum of the American West (Autry National Center) is a museum in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to exploring an inclusive history of the American West. Founded in 1988, the museum presents a wide range of exhibitions and pub ...

, Los Angeles, California, the

Eiteljorg Museum The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is an art museum in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The Eiteljorg houses an extensive collection of visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as Western Amer ...

, Indianapolis Indiana, the James Museum, Saint Petersburg, Florida, and murals at the historic La Fonda Hotel, Santa Fe, NM. His awards include the New Mexico Governor's Excellence in the Arts Award in 2012, the Native Treasures Living Treasure in 2012 by the

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is a museum of Native American art and culture located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is one of eight museums in the state operated by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs and is accredited by the Ame ...

, and the Gene Autry Memorial Award in 2018 from the Autry Museum of the American West.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abeyta, Tony Navajo artists Navajo male artists 1965 births People from Gallup, New Mexico Institute of American Indian Arts alumni Maryland Institute College of Art alumni New York University alumni Living people